Fat Chance

Simon Gray

Granta Books, 2005 - Biography & Autobiography - 126 pages

In February 1995, Simon Gray's Cell Mates opened at the Albery Theatre, London, starring Stephen Fry and Rik Mayall. A few days later, Stephen Fry mysteriously - and famously - vanished, leaving in his wake a mixture of anger and incomprehension, turmoil and gallantry. Fry's understudy stepped in, a replacement was found, but just three weeks later, the play closed. Fat Chance is Simon Gray's intimate story of how a West End play was made and unmade, a classic account of theatrical misadventure.

About the author

Playwright Simon Gray was born in Hayling Island, Hampshire, England on October 21, 1936. He received degrees from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada and from Cambridge University. He has edited a literary review (like the characters in The Common Pursuit) and taught drama, poetry, and English literature in universities, both major and provincial. He has written 40 plays, television plays, and screenplays and five novels, and adapted Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Idiot for the National Theatre. Some of his works include Butley, Otherwise Engaged, Quartermaine's Terms, The Smoking Diaries, The Year of the Jouncer, and The Last Cigarette. He died on August 6, 2008.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Fat Chance
• Author: Simon Gray
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Granta Books, 2005
• ISBN: 1862077460, 9781862077461
• Length: 126 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Entertainment & Performing Arts; Biography & Autobiography / General; Performing Arts / Theater / Direction & Production